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Talk to the global leaders in fleet management, vehicle tracking and personal safety
As we get further into 2012, we’re busy launching more products in the MiX Telematics fleet
MiX Track enables fleet operators to track and trace a wide range of mobile assets anytime, anywhere. The solutions are effective and suit operator’s requirements from the simplicity of track and trace for a small fleet to full monitoring of larger fleets. management line. This April our Business Development Team has been all over Asia introducing our latest innovation delivering the essentials in fleet tracking to an emerging traffic.
Let’s take a closer look at what we’ve accomplished in Singapore…
At the MiX Track Launch our team hosted a combination of telecommunications companies, trade associations and logistics companies, including quite a few big name operators. The event was well attended and well organised with a good combination of attendees. Our Business Development Team interacts with the attendees to understand their business and their needs and then discusses the solutions that MiX Telematics might provide. So just because someone came looking for more information on MiX Track, doesn’t mean that our relationship will only be limited to that. MiX Telematics looks to offer the very best in all fleet management and vehicle tracking solutions.
One of the neat features of MiX Track is the precision Mapping. Using Streel level or Satellite Maps, MiX Track’s maps provide vehicle-position information with pinpoint accuracy. The system allows routes (both current and historical) to be traced on screen and distances calculated with ease. The “find nearest vehicle” feature helps you to easily identify the closest vehicle to a customer.
For the full Press Release on the launch of MiX Track in Asia, check out our Press Office here!
Shawn Graaff is the Online Content & Social Media Manager for MiX Telematics International. Based in South Africa, Shawn is an American dreaming in digital with a special interest in Mobile for Africa and sustainable living. Follow her tweets about Social Media Marketing, SEO, Content Strategy, and Online Community Management @ShawnGraaff.
Over the last five years people all over the world have been turning of their lights on the last Saturday in March for an hour at 8:30pm. This movement was started by WWF Australia in 2007 with around 2.2 million people participating. Over the following years it has grown into what is being described as ‘the world’s largest campaign for the planet’, with more than 1.8 billion people across 135 countries taking part.
Here is a link to a video, which gives a great idea of what happened.
This year WWF put forward a new challenge: 60+, challenging people to go beyond just the 60 minutes. Celebrities like Jay Z pledged to do a free concert if 100, 000 fans pledge to turn over to green power; HSBC CEO pledged to cycle to work for a week if 50, 000 customers go to paperless banking. Companies and individuals alike have all chipped in for this fantastic initiative.
MiX Telematics is a Senior Member of the WWF and we encourage our employees and customers to support this great movement, every day. This year, one of our pledges is to replace our employee’s incandescent lights with energy saving bulbs with a Light Bulb Exchange Program. Employees will be given an energy saving bulb for their incandescent bulbs, which will later be donated to a local school to help achieve maximum use for production objects, accompanied by a recycling guide for them to utilize for these bulbs as well as other objects on their premises. We hope that this will spread the knowledge of recycling in local communities as well as responsibly achieve the most use of all objects that have consumed energy in their lifespan.
Additionally, we encouraged everyone to turn their lights off for this period by doing a “black out” for 60+ hours on our Facebook and Twitter to show our support for the initiative.
How did you support Earth Hour this year? Swing by our Facebook Page and tell us! You can also get a FREE Green Office Guide there to help make your office a greener place to work.
Brendan Buzer is a Product Manager at MiX Telematics International, based in South Africa. He is passionate about the outdoors and the environment and hopes to convey his enthusiasm for this subject on to others. Follow him on Twitter at @brendanbuzer.
Shawn Graaff is the Online Content & Social Media Manager for MiX Telematics International. Based in South Africa, Shawn is an American dreaming in digital with a special interest in Mobile for Africa and sustainable living. Follow her tweets about Social Media Marketing, SEO, Content Strategy, and Online Community Management @ShawnGraaff.
Now that MiX Telematics has officially released our latest mobile application, MiX Fleet Mobile, we chatted to a developer to dig a little bit deeper into the interesting facets of how this product came to be and what makes it so special.
Chris van Wyk, takes the time to share his thoughts on the development of MiX Fleet Mobile App…
“First of all, I’d like to give a big shout out to the FM-Web team, who completed the project as I had been moved off to another product during the later stages of the development on the project.
The MiX Fleet Mobile App is the mobile offering product based on features from the flagship product FM-Web, our premiere web-based service for commercial fleet operators that services fleets world-wide.
With this in mind it does not take a lot of imagination to realize that this codebase has reached a substantial level of maturity and as a result has collected its fare share of legacy code.
What you must keep in mind with legacy code though is however best your intentions are, there are always areas within the system, which may be adversely affected by code changes and or additions. Thus, the development team had to approach all changes with precision and support a great deal of testing.
In addition to this, trying to introduce new approaches in development and architecture comes at a cost not everyone is comfortable with and or potentially willing to sink effort into. The approach we wanted to take going forward in terms of supporting the mobile applications on FM-Web was to introduce the mobile API as RESTFul services.
The challenge we faced was which framework to use while taking into consideration that the application stack is Microsoft based and predominantly using C#. Together with this, all existing web services were soap base and implements security and logging features specific to the solution. So if we were to introduce new services, these services would need to fit into the existing constraints of at least the security and logging features.
Having worked on a proof of concept project, introducing Ruby into the organization, the search was on to find a framework that would give us the same or similar benefits of Sinatra and Rack.
Enter NancyFX. The best way to describe NancyFX must be the following description taken from the projects website: “Nancy is a lightweight, low-ceremony, framework for building HTTP based services on .Net and Mono. The goal of the framework is to stay out of the way as much as possible and provide a super-duper-happy-path to all interactions.”
The selling point for me was the amazing balance the guys on the project achieved between the static typed and dynamic object world that exists in both the Microsoft.NET Framework 4 and the latest releases of Mono. Coupled with the implementation of pipelining and pre or post-request hooks snapping the NancyFX framework on top of the FM-Web business logic was as they say, taking “super-duper-happy-path”.
There are a number of things, which I am really excited about in terms of the final outcome of this project. The first is that there are open source projects in existence like NancyFx, which proves that the “we-did-not-build-it”, or it is not from Microsoft, mindset of the average .Net developer to be not entirely accurate. The second is that it is possible to devise simple and elegant solutions hooking into and extending systems sometimes thought of as “legacy” without rebuilding or reinventing the wheel, i.e. reusing security and logging features.
Lastly, and I would venture to say the most important in my opinion, that now having been able to introduce a RESTFul architecture into the FM-Web world and modularly exposing data as required, the possibilities for future feature rich mobile and web development is limitless and we look forward to pushing the boundaries to achieve the best development solutions possible.”
For the full press release visit http://www.mixtelematics.com/news/MiXMobileFleet.
Chris Van Wyk is a Developer at MiX Telematics in Stellenbosch, South Africa. He is currently focused on mobile development (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7), Hypermedia driven RESTful APIs, Micro Web Frameworks and having fun with code.
If you are planning a holiday road trip for the festive season in 2011, but want to keep your carbon footprint to a minimum, we’ve got some quick and easy tips for you to keep your travel as eco-friendly and carbon-neutral as possible.
From MiX Telematics, Happy Holidays and travel safely!
Brendan Buzer is a Product Manager at MiX Telematics International, based in South Africa. He is passionate about the outdoors and the environment and hopes to convey his enthusiasm for this subject on to others. Follow him on Twitter at @brendanbuzer.
Shawn Graaff is the Online Content & Social Media Manager for MiX Telematics International. Based in South Africa, Shawn is an American dreaming in digital with a special interest in Mobile for Africa and sustainable living. Follow her tweets about Social Media Marketing, SEO, Content Strategy, and Online Community Management @ShawnGraaff.
At the conference countries are classified as either Annexe 1 or 2, which is the fancy name for developed and developing countries. Under the current protocol only the developed countries have to set aside part of their annual GDP to developing and putting in place sustainable technologies, as they already have adequate infrastructure and investment in their countries, thus allowing them to channel funds elsewhere.
Inconsistencies in this ranking of countries cause problems. For example, China (Annexe 2) is the largest contributor to global CO2 emissions, closely followed by the USA (Annexe1). These are two of the world’s superpowers and the US believes China should also be penalised financially. China’s argument against this is that looking at per capita emissions China is close to the bottom of the table and the US is highest by far.
This is an example of one of the many problems that has to be overcome in the upcoming talks, if we hope to have some legislation governing emissions in the future.
What can be expected from COP17?
It is going to be interesting. I believe that the Kyoto protocol agreement will be extended for another 2-4 years which will allow time to put together a new agreement, or extend the current one, but with new emissions targets. There is going to be a lot of pressure on China and the United States to come up with some kind of resolution, in order for the process to go forward.
How will this affect us?
Any kind of resolution that is reached will mean the reduction of green house gasses. This is done through putting emissions caps on businesses. If a business goes over this cap they will be liable for a fine. This will target the industries that are responsible for large amounts of emissions. The road transport industry is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. At MiX we realise this. We already offset our own emissions through one of our own solutions, MiX COI and we are also continually looking for new ways to reduce the companies impact on the environment.
These talks are vital to the continuation of some sort of legislation that governs emissions, with out this the world is in some serious trouble, so let’s hope for the best.
Brendan Buzer is a Product Manager at MiX Telematics International, based in South Africa. He is passionate about the outdoors and the environment and hopes to convey his enthusiasm for this subject on to others. Follow him on Twitter at @brendanbuzer.
Steve Jobs not only pushed himself and his ventures to the limits of development potential, he tapped into a sphere of technological ingenuity that perhaps could not have been foreseen. He changed the way we think, the way we work, the way we live. Steve Jobs has left a legacy in many the general population’s lives via the mobile and computing devices we use, but he has also made an astounding impact on the fields of Design and Development that his legacy will forever live on in the dawn of the new Digital Age that his ‘Think Different’ mantra has given rise to.
As the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple, co-founder of Pixar Animation studios, a member on the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company, and founder of NeXT, the late Steve Jobs paved many roads in design and development. He was an inspirational and creative powerhouse and with the introduction of everything ‘i’ or ‘mac,’ Developer, Trevor Langeveldt, notes that “Jobs ultimately revolutionised the way we see and interact with the world digitally as well as how we model our user interface and use design principles to better serve the needs of our end-users.”
Wednesday, 5 October 2011, the world lost Steve Jobs the man, but we will never lose his contributions to the way we interact with devices and technology. “MiX Telematics’ Developers and Designers have certainly been influenced by the strides in development innovation made by Apple with Jobs at the helm, especially in terms of User Experience, Mobile App Development, and even Design principles. It’s clear that we all strive more now than ever to Think Different,” notes Charl van Wyk, MiX Telematics UI specialist, who focuses on the fusion of Design and Development.
“Here at MiX Telematics, we care about User Experience and much like Steve Jobs, our developers take their work to heart. Being passionate about what you do is the key to success and we’re proud to say that passion most definitely plays a big part in how we work as a company,” says Product Manager, Tertius Wessels.
It also goes without saying that Steve Jobs’ innovations in the field have influenced all levels of a development team. Terry Buzer, Group Director responsible for Development, feels that “keeping developers motivated and inspired is a key performance objective that MiX Telematics strives to maintain and in so doing, we are able to bring the end user the very best in telematics technology design and quality.”
MiX Telematics Developer, Chris van Wyk, says, “Mobile development and for a large part, software development, are key creative outlets for me. For me to be creative, I truly need to believe in what I’m doing. I believe the natural progression from here forward will be seeing your users experience a ‘Wow, this is great’ moment when using your products.”
Thank you, Steve Jobs, for making us Think Different, reach further, and create with more confidence.
Shawn Graaff is the Online Content & Social Media Manager for MiX Telematics International. Based in South Africa, Shawn is an American dreaming in digital with a special interest in Mobile for Africa and sustainable living. Follow her tweets about Social Media Marketing, SEO, Content Strategy, and Online Community Management @ShawnGraaff.
A brand has been described as a set of promises in the mind of the consumer; it’s also been defined as an organisation’s reputation, or personality. Blackcoffee, brand management and design consultancy, describes a brand as “an experience living at the intersection of promise and expectation.” Here are some tips on getting started in your efforts to ‘Back Your Brand’…
Embarking on a brand assessment initiative is almost always an exciting step in the right direction. Back your brand and benefit from the many hidden opportunities that lie just beneath the surface!
Leanne Jory is the Communications Manager for MiX Telematics International. Her passion for branding is supported by international experience in the fields of internal and external communication. Industries in which Leanne has gained experience include technology, logistics, advertising and real estate. Follow Leanne on Twitter @LeanneJory
On 20 July 2011 Morne du Toit and his family celebrated a moment to cherish as his doctor informed him that after 4 months of chemotherapy there were no traces of Hodgkin’s lymphoma remaining in his system.
To celebrate with his MiX family Morne carved his way through an enormous cake. The sugar rush was almost as exhilarating as hearing the good news and we are all ecstatic for Morne who has been a real role model throughout his recovery period. Never has he uttered a complaint nor become despondent, keeping his focus on what mattered most – making sure he came through well for his, and his families sake.
Our message to Morne is this: Life is like the hair on top of your head; sometimes short, sometimes long. Glad we can say in your case there is no correlation to your own hair. ☺
Congratulations and keep fighting.
For a few short but magical hours the Upper Eastside Hotel in Woodstock was the center of the wine universe as the 2011 Nederburg Auction Public Tastings dazzled wine lovers with 19 exclusive and fine wines to taste.
Showing their appreciation for fine wines, Cedric, Sabine, Gavin and Christina at the Nederburg Auction Public Tastings.
With MiX Stellenbosch offices situated in the heart of the Winelands it is no surprise that MiX was well represented at this memorable occasion. Gavin Harvett, Christina Harvett, Sabine Klisch and Cedric Jones were there to enjoy an evening of indulgence with some of the best wines the local wine industry has to offer.
Guests made their way through the tasting schedule in style as they were treated to wines representing various varietals, vineyards and cultivars. The tasting was led by Cape Wine Master Bennie Howard and guests got the opportunity to taste, amongst others, a 2004 Syrah from Marcel de Reuck, an elegant 2005 Merlot from De Grendel, Le Bonheur’s acclaimed Prima 2001, and a 2005 Nederburg Private Bin Eminence, the beautiful dessert wine produced by 2011’s Platter’s SA Wine Guide Winery of the Year.
In true fashion MiX’ers set high standards in all areas and of course our very own wine experts we asked some questions.
See Gavin and Cedric being interviewed below.
MiX Telematics is proud to launch our new Calendar Competition for 2012. The competition, which we run each year, is open to all employees and MiX Telematics dealers and appeals to our network’s budding photographers!
Each participant can submit up to 20 high quality photos and the winning entries are then published in the MiX Telematics Calendar for the year to come.
To make it more engaging, we select a theme that allows for the perfect combination between artistic freedom and impressive entries. The theme for this year’s competition is simply, COLOUR! It is no mystery that we are all affected by colour. In China, red is the colour of happiness, white the colour of autumn. Yellow is associated with happiness and fun, while brown offers a warm reminder of the earth beneath our feet. Our world speaks to us in colour and we speak back through a spectrum of interpretations and applications.
We’re excited to co-create a World of Colour with our employees and dealers and plan on announcing the winners sometime in September. The closing date is 31 August 2011.
